Denizens of GameDev! I somehow ended up with an interview to work as a mobile engineer for a large games company.

Slight issue: I know next to nothing about the specifics of mobile development.

That being said, this job would be a very large and very important step for me, so I'm going to spend every free moment until the interview attempting to become an expert in the subject matter - or at least rise above neophyte.

I've already done various searches and have a pile of material on the subject(s), but I'm looking for more. If you are in a helpful mood, please tell me what you consider the most important areas of study for mobile development (IE networking topics, tools/software used, etc) and if you happen to know of some particularly good references/information sources on them, throw me a name and a link and I'll hunt them down.

I'm aware it's a large subject, but whatever additional focus you can lend me would be fantastic. Thanks for any help!

If you are a gameplay programmer for an existing engine, then really you just need some skill in the target programming language. If you are already a competent programmer then the transition is generally not that hard. Similarly for network programming, audio programming, and a few others. If you know generally what you are doing, and you have a good engine in place already, then transitioning to a new engine will take a bit of a learning curve but is generally not that hard.

If instead they are looking for an engine programmer working from scratch, that is an entirely different situation. Even having many years of experience may not be enough, it takes much learning, much effort, and a lot of technical work (meaning accurate measurements and solid designs) to make that transition.

I'm of the opinion that it is generally not possible to "cram" for interviews. Either you have the skills and talents they are looking for, you you do not. Even if you do fool them during an interview it is unlikely that you could fool them for the first two or three months where new workers are still considered probationary.

If you happen to know that they are looking for a specific engine like Unity or C4 or something else, read up on it. If you want to study the platforms then do some reading about it. Either way, be prepared to tell them "I don't know how to do that on that system, but I can tell you how to do it on PC" and it will generally be good enough.

I'm of the opinion that it is generally not possible to "cram" for interviews.

I'd tend to agree, yet when faced with an opportunity like this I can't help but scramble to find some way to improve my chances, even if the way is of questionable value. It would feel wrong to just sit back and accept whatever happens. Part of the difficulty does come from having no real clue exactly what they'll have me doing. It's client systems (things like community software - think Steam) instead of actual games, I'm pretty sure.

Either way, I am a decent programmer (or at least, so I tell myself) and won't be going into this completely blind to the skills and knowledge required. I was just hoping to brush up on some of the more pertinent topics.